What I did on my summer holidays

A Jungley Descent

"This is your bike" the guide says, "it’s called Barney, this is the bike you’ll be using all day, look after it, treat it like a friend" he continues echoing the Drill Sergeant from Full Metal Jacket’s words a little too closely for my liking. "Whatever you do, don’t swap it with anyone else; all the bikes are different and you need to get a feel for your brakes so you don’t have any problems". What he doesn’t say, and I don’t want to think too much about, is that any "problems" I encounter over the next few hours will probably involve an exciting, but ultimately quite brief visit to the valley floor hundreds of metres below.

For reasons I’m not 100% clear of I’m standing by the side of an Andean lake at a, literally, breathtaking 4700 metres up in the air, about 900 metres above La Paz, Bolivia – which is pretty brisk in the height department itself – it's just after 8am and I'm preparing with a dozen other foolhardy souls to plummet headlong down the Yungas Road – until recently the only was to get from La Paz to Bolivia’s jungle interior.

The Yungas Road is a startlingly sparse strip of dust and gravel hacked from the side of the mountains by Paraguayan prisoners taken in the Chaco War in the 1930s and used as a handy source of slave labour by the Bolivian government; with all the quality of workmanship that implies. Frankly the road is more than a little worrying to even look at, let alone to decide to travel up or down; knowing that until 2006 it’s estimated that up to 300 people died falling of the edge every year, doesn’t inspire much confidence in your ability to pull the correct lever of an unfamiliar bike fast enough, but not too fast, to prevent yourself throwing yourself bike- or head-first down a 600 metre cliff.

The first 8 kilometres of the ride – which totals anything from 63 to 72 kilometres depending on where you read it – is on a proper tarmac road though, so we get a few short runs to get the hang of the bikes. It’s not as easy as you might imagine. When you’re suddenly launched downhill with cold, freshly-serviced hydraulic brakes, you do find them snatching rather alarmingly until they warm up and until you get the right height for your saddle, you feel even more at the mercy of gravity than you’d like. But the tarmac stretches at least accustom you to dodging rapidly-approaching potholes, workmen, heavy lorries and sharp corners before the main event really gets going.

The first corners of the road proper aren’t too scary; you’ve paid your entrance fee and the guide has gone over some of the history and re-stated the dangers: a young French cyclist recently went over the edge, a small group lost two of their party not long before. They’d not been taking it seriously, one had been standing on his pedals, but not been as balanced on two wheels as he’d thought. "Know your limits" the guide repeats.

Of course the first corners almost catch me out. An apparently wide, flat and shallow right hander turns out to tighten far more than it looks and the gravel slips under my wheels as I try to slow to a sensible speed. Larger lumps of rock, "baby's heads" as they're known in the trade apparently, almost kick my front wheel out. I manage to keep upright by the skin of my teeth – although I’d imagine the swearing helped – and reach the first checkpoint suitable chastened and not too damp of trouser.

In Illustrious Tyre-Treads

We continue. We pass over tiny precarious bridges over gushing torrents of Andean rivers; we come very close to sheer rock walls on both sides of the road, we pass under waterfalls. I start to get the hang of the bike and am immensely glad the brakes have warmed up and aren’t squeaking and grabbing like they were at the top. I catch sight of brightly coloured birds flitting in and out of the jungle and am swarmed by butterflies the size of my fist. The slower, more wheel-fixated members of the group become intimately acquainted with giant brown caterpillars that cross the path, unaware of rapidly approaching pneumatic death. We stop under a large waterfall. This is where Top Gear filmed a precarious section of a recent episode: "all faked" the guides insist. It doesn’t matter, from where I am it still looks pretty impressive.

As we descend it gets warmer and we lose some of our layers of clothing; it’s pretty chilly at 4700 metres first things in the morning and we set off kitted out in protective gear that had more than a hint of Darth Vader. Maybe it’s the warmth and the exercise, maybe it’s the suddenly abundant oxygen – we’ve been at over 3000 metres of altitude for two weeks or more – maybe it’s the effects of over-reliance on codeine and Bolivian Xanax that I’ve been using to counter the altitude headaches, whatever it is, I start to really get into the ride. I build speed, I pass slower riders, I begin to take in the spectacular views across and down the valley. I begin to think that maybe mountain biking is a way I could spend my time.

As we stop for a breather and drink after a couple of hours, our guide tells us about 'collarbone corner', the bit of the road we’re heading onto; it’s the section that he’s seen most accidents on. It’s deceptively safe-looking and you’re getting into the ride now. "Take it easy", he says "we might be trained to rescue you from over the edge but we don’t want to. It should be ok though, most accidents happen to experienced mountain bikers, large groups of guys trying to show off and people in happy pants – the ubiquitous stripy trousers that certain travellers insist on wearing – but you lot should be alright."

The longest leg of the ride takes us through this final leg to the official exit of the road; we’ll have been riding for over three hours by the time we get to the gate where the lady checks we’ve all survived and more importantly have all paid. You can really get some speed up when you get the hang of it, without a speedometer it’s hard to tell, but we’ve got to be well over 20 miles an hour for a long part of the ride. It feels a lot faster in places. Even the slower members of the group who have been right at the back are getting into it; there’s overtaking, a general speeding up and they seem to be having more fun: my wife, who’s been back there all day even reports that the Australian couple who she’s been struggling along with are going a lot faster than they were to start with.

So we get to the final stop of the road proper; they’ve started building facilities for riders all down the road, this might take away from the experience for the purists, but it’s nice to be able to have a “comfort break” after four hours descending and being extreme.

After a while though it becomes apparent that we’ve been waiting a long time for the last few to catch up. Longer than usual. It turns out that someone has come off; we don’t know who. We don’t know what’s happened. As the guide is on the radio with his partner who has been with the tail, we don’t know what’s going on. I’m getting rather worried, my wife is back there. I’m starting to worry about explaining her untimely demise to the family back home.

The End

It’s a long, worrying wait.

Then she appears round the final bend and fills us in with the details.

The young Australian girl who has been her companion for most of the day got carried away and lost control. And fell. Mercifully she was going round a left hander and her momentum carried her into the wall rather than off the edge. She’s pretty battered and bruised though and is in the support bus looking pretty bad. Nothing apparently broken, but she’s dazed, bruised and short of breath so the guides take her to the nearest hospital to get her checked out. We carry on to the bottom of the road in a slightly more sombre mood.

Fortunately it later transpires that it's nothing more than heavy bruising and a few cuts. Nothing life-threatening. She's very lucky and her 36 hour flight back to Melbourne isn't going to be fun, but at least there isn't going to be another wooden cross added to the side of the road today. We finish off by heading to the Senda Verde animal sanctuary in the valley floor; making sure to remember that the deep puddle on the inside of the final left hand bend is mostly poo and other exciting human by-products.

If anything, the drive back up in the bus was more scary. After a few months of South America you'd have thought I'd have got used to the driving, but you never do. Even now the memories of the driver careering along, not really watching where he's going as our guide tells us of all the lives the road has claimed over the years, including a bus of 30 passengers that all went over, give me the willies...